Friday

There are three free WordPress themes that provided by EasyWebTutorial with easily customizable and also optimized for your blog posts to rank well in the search engines. Those themes are in two columns and three columns layout.

Below you see the screenshots for each theme and the download links.Downloads are available in two archive formats: .zip and .tar. You will need a tool like WinZip or WinRAR (for PC users) or Stuffit Expander (for Mac users) to extract the archives.

After searching and visiting many blogs, analyzing them and doing some interviews with WordPress members, finally we found and make the list the most popular plugins of WordPress:

The Google Sitemaps Webmaster Central program by Google is absolutely one of the most helpful things Google has ever put out. If you are fixing your own site or someone else’s there’s no better way to figure out what a search engine thinks about your site. This plugin updates and rebuilds the XML file everytime you make a new post and ping’s google to tell them about it. It’s especially helpful if you publish on a predetermined schedule. Warning make sure you have the file permissions set correctly or this won’t work properly.

Search Pages - This plugin ties the built in search function in wordpress to the pages. The default installation only searches blog posts. This is an absolute neccesity if you are using wordpress as a CMS and not a blogging tool.

Search Meter - Looking at search logs to find out who’s searching for what can be a valuable tool for figuring out what’s right and what’s wrong on your site.

Static Homepage - If you want to use wordpres as a CMS instead of a blog this plugin makes the homepage magic happen.

Dagon Design Sitemap Generator - Let’s be honest once you’ve got a site over 50 pages maintaining a sitemap by hand is tedious and inefficient. This plugin has quite a few options and takes care of all the grunt work for you.

Objection Redirection - This plugin by Dax is one of the most powerful and useful plugins I use. It let’s you redirect old and broken url’s to clean and fresh url’s without you having to touch an htaccess file.

Visitor IP Logger is a simple module that lets you see all IPs that visit your website. It uses a password-protected page to display the data that is collected automatically, once the module is activated.

Adsense Deluxe - A powerful way to control adsense from a master level on your blog.

Adsense Injection - Another Dax special that randomly inserts Adsense somewhere in each posting. Not advisable for the control freaks, definitely advisable for sites with lots of returning readers who don’t normally click on Adsense.

AddThis Social Bookmarking will help your visitor promote your website or blog. Put the AddThis Social Bookmarking Widget on your site or blog, so any visitor can easily bookmark it. The widget works with all popular bookmarking services.

Amazon Links Pro is a plugin for adding relevant and contextual links to Amazon.com products. It generates code automatically and allows full customization of how and when contextual links appear within your content.

Kontera plugin adds the Kontera script to the bottom of the page. Also it is possible to customize your Kontera ads even further through the Options page. It is very easy not to set the color, and heading filtering of the ads. More options will come in the future. Furthermore the plugin restricts the Kontera ads to your blog content, and not outside of it. This optimizes the number of clicks the ads receive. Finally you can choose which posts to omit from targeting. This is very useful when you use PayPerPost, or other services that require you to remove anything that overlaps the content in your post.

Adhesive - Allows you to stick a posting to the top overriding the standard chronological order of things.

Moderate Trackbacks - Not used as much as it once was Akismet catches most of the spam, but I keep it around as a backup.

Postie - A very powerful tool if you do remote posting via email. Takes a little tinkering to get it set up right but once you do it’s hands off. Combine with cronless postie for regular automated checking.

Flickr Photosets - If you are doing anything with flickr this plugin kicks ass letting you tie it into your wordpress bog. Especially nice if you’ve upgraded to flickr pro and have multiple albums, see an example.

Top 10 Posts - gives you the top 10 posts by views, very hackable see my top 100 posts for an example.

WP Cron - Makes all sorts of wordpress housekeeping features happen automagically. Just be sure to activate the main plugin first before any of the others or things may not work properly.

In my many years of designing, developing and maintaining websites, I've come across many sites/tools that offer value to webmasters. Though I have a large list of bookmarks, I have narrowed it down to twelve (free) sites that I find to be the most useful, and I visit them often. I'm not listing them in order of relative importance, but rather in the order in which you'd go to them when creating a new website.

1. Overture's Keyword Selector ToolWhen you're in the planning stage for your site, this will help you validate whether or not your idea is a good one. It will tell the estimated number of times that term was searched on in the last month, so you'll be able to get an idea of how in demand your site will be. It also provides related searches that include your term, which give you an idea of the content to include in your site.

2. Pre-built PHP ScriptsThis site can save you a lot of time and money, in that you won't have to develop your site from scratch. Whether you're looking to implement a CMS or blogging tool, or perhaps including classifieds or a photo gallery, the free scripts on this site will prevent you from having to build from scratch.

3. Current web design style guideThis will give you many ideas and considerations when creating the actual template for your site.

4. CSS ToolsWhen you're designing your template based on item #2, you'll most likely need some CSS help. OK, so this link is actually to another list, but it's certainly an incredibly valuable and comprehensive one. If you have any question about CSS or would like help creating an effect on your site that you've seen on another, you'll most likely find the information there!

5. A Color Matching ToolUnless you're an artist or very good designer, you may not instinctively know which colors work best with each other. So if your logo contains primarily #80ABBF blue, and you want to design your template around it, this site will help you find complimentary colors to incorporate into the design.

6. Favicon Editor & GeneratorWhile this is not absolutely essential, it's becoming more common practice to for sites to have a custom favicon. (If you're not sure what that is, it's the little icon that appears beside the URL, the title in the tab, and the favorite/bookmark, depending on your browser. It gives your site a professional, fully-developed feel. You can 'draw' your own with this tool, or upload a 16×16 .png file to generate your custom favicon.ico file.

7. Free Stock ImagesThis is an enormous resource for those who want to place professional looking photos on their site, but don't want to pay the normally high price for stock photos. Alternately, I'd recommend iStockPhoto for very cheap stock imagery.

8. Search Engine SubmissionOnce your site has some structure and content, it's time to alert the search engines, and start drawing traffic! Here are quick links to the top three, you're on your own to find others…- Google- Yahoo- MSN- DMOZ

9. Sitemap GeneratorTo have your site indexed more quickly, regularly and completely, you need an XML sitemap that conforms to the current sitemaps protocol. If you have Joomla, WordPress or another CMS, you can most likely find a plugin that automatically generates your sitemap. For Blogger or Blogspot users you can use Google Webmaster Tools for creating this. Otherwise, use this tool to manually spider your site and create one for you.

10. Web AnalyticsWhile you may have free web analytics tools that come with your hosting package, Google Analytics will give you insight into your visitors and their navigation on your site that simply can't be rivaled by any other free tools.

11. Search Ranking and Back-link Monitoring ToolAs your site grows, you can use this tool to monitor how you're tracking in search rankings for your keywords. You can also see how many backlinks your site has, and how many pages the search engines have indexed on your site.

12. Webmaster ForumsJoin these forums, and you'll never look back! Here you'll find invaluable advice from thousands of other webmasters on how to continually improve your site, and increase traffic and profits from virtually any type of site!

Monday

It's been exactly two years since Apple threw its hat into the professional photography ring with the introduction of Aperture. Adobe responded shortly thereafter with the introduction of Lightroom. So, how does the pro photography market look now?

InfoTrends recently surveyed 1,026 professional photographers in North America to determine which software they used for raw file processing. Here's what folks reported:

66.5% using the Photoshop Camera Raw plug-in

23.6% using Lightroom

5.5% using Aperture

To be fair to Aperture, it might be helpful to remove Windows users from the equation for a moment. Even after doing so, Lightroom's usage among Mac-based pros is still nearly double that of Aperture (26.6% vs. 14.3%).

It's also worth pointing out that photographers haven't started to abandon Photoshop as a result of using tools such as Lightroom. (Photoshop usage overall remains in the 90% range.) The vast majority of photographers seem to understand pretty clearly the different nature & roles of the apps, and they continue to view Photoshop as a must-have part of any serious arsenal.

Lightroom is clearly off to a tremendous start, and everyone here is really pleased & grateful to the photography community for such a warm welcome.

Initially available only to US-based English language sites, video units deliver targeted video clips from YouTube partners, with advertising above the clip and superimposed over the bottom 20 percent of the video.The use of text ads means Google has a large pool of advertisers to draw on for the new units.

The superimposed approach seems more visitor friendly than inserting pre-roll ads: who wants to watch a 15 second ad before they can see a 60 second clip?

Like regular embedded YouTube clips, the ads do not play until the visitor clicks on them, and the superimposed ads can be minimised in height to be less intrusive. Ads may be targeted to the content of the site and the video, or to the specific site. Payment may be based on clicks or impressions, but Google did not indicate how the revenue will be divided between itself, the site publisher and the video provider.

"This new program is a scalable and cost-effective way to distribute content online, creates a new revenue opportunity for publishers and content owners, and helps advertisers reach their target audiences in new and innovative ways," said Google officials. "It will also allow AdSense publishers a unique way to enhance their sites with fresh, dynamic content."

Saturday

Following Yahoo's third quarter 2007 financial results, the Mountain View company Google today published its results revealing revenues of $4.23 billion for the quarter ended September 30, 2007. It was already known that Googleis one of the richest companies on the web and today's results come to confirm this statement. According to the super giant, this quarter's results represent an increase of 57 percent in comparison with the same period of the last year and a 9 percent increase from the second quarter of this year.

"We are very pleased with the impressive growth we experienced across our business," said Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google. "Our core search advertising business experienced continued momentum driven by growth in monetization and traffic, and we are creating a wider and deeper ads system through our focus on innovation, bringing more ad formats to our advertisers. Our efforts to offer more products and services in international markets as well as effectively grow our technology infrastructure and add to our deep talent base during the quarter helped to deliver growth by enabling Google to reach more users around the world."

What's most impressive is that Google proved an amazing financial power since 65 percent of its revenues were generated by the company's websites and technologies, meaning that Google produced no less than $2.73 billion. In comparison with the same period of 2006, this year's results come with a 68 percent increase and only 10 percent from the second quarter of 2007.

The main source of revenues for the Mountain View company is still the United States which generated 52 percent of the total money coming to the Googleplex.

"Revenues from outside of the United States totaled $2.03 billion, representing 48% of total revenues in the third quarter of 2007, compared to 44% in the third quarter of 2006 and 48% in the second quarter of 2007."

If you'd like to read all the Google financial results, feel free to visit the official press release available here.

Many of you who own a website or at least a blog embed YouTube clips very often in order to make the content more attractive for the visitors. Because of that, the video sharing service released a new function which enables youto create YouTube bars and place them on your website to invite users to view certain clips.

Obviously, the video bar can be configured to showcase only the movies from a certain channel or the ones which match a specific search query. The video bar can be easily implemented into your website because the YouTube video bar wizard provides you a simple code just like any embeddable video.

At this time, you're able to choose from two versions of video bars, vertical or horizontal as well as from several channels including most viewed videos, top rated videos and recently featured videos.

"Got a blog or website? Maybe you want to add some pizzazz in the form of YouTube videos. If you've ever embedded individual videos, you might be interested in adding a horizontal or vertical YouTube video bar. It's easy to set up and you can customize it to feature a specific YouTube channel, Most Viewed Videos, Top Rated Videos, Recently Featured Videos, or videos resulting from a certain search term," the YouTube team wrote on the main blog of the video sharing service.

The entire configuration process can be made in a matter of seconds as it only requires you to enter minimal details about the channels and the type of the video bar.

"If you're curious about what else you can do with the Video Bar, check out the GSvideoBar documentation. With a little more programming, you can change the player size, number of results, thumbnail size, and more," Google stated in an attempt to attract more users.

Thursday

I came up with this list of signs that you might be a hardcore designer. A lot of these signs can overlap other professions too. From my experience, the following list contains mostly truths, mixed in with a little humor.

Website navigation plays an integral role in keeping your site easy to use and navigate. Button tutorials are useful because you can take the techniques you like from a tutorial and use them to make your own custom buttons to match the site your working on.

Tuesday

Google is at it again. No, I’m not talking about pushing the envelope in innovative search and advertising technologies; I’m talking about increasing the wealth of lucky shareholders who have enjoyed a 33.6% gain in price per share (PPS) year to date (YTD). Yesterday the internet behemoth, stock ticker GOOG, broke $600 for the first time.

Although the stock has been pushing all time highs for the last month, this psychologically important mark provides a good point for reflection on the how and why of the amazing performance of this stock.

It all started on August 19th, 2004, when Google held its initial public offering (IPO) at $85 per share. In the remaining months of the year the stock more than doubled to close the year over $190. The PPS more than doubled again in 2005. The following year was a volatile period, most of which was spent in the red. GOOG closed 2006 only slightly higher than where it began.

Statements declaring the causes of a stock’s performance are conjectures at best, but to my recollection the common thought in 2006 was that GOOG simply could not continue grow its earnings per share (EPS) at a fast enough rate to warrant its tremendous price to earnings (PE) ratio. This is a painful phase in the life of many publicly traded tech companies as they transition from what traders refer to as a “growth stock” to a “value stock.” In GOOG’s case the PE ratio contracted from 100 to the high 50s in a year when EPS grew over 70%.

Late in 2006 Google began taking actions that have rekindled the street’s love of this company as a growth stock. It started with the October purchase of YouTube for $1.65 billion in stock. Over the following months the company began to demonstrate its ability to monetize the video-sharing website through advertising, as well as negotiate the legal risk of user posted content.

Recently speculation about a Google phone has accelerated the growth of stock price. It is believed that the company will either produce a phone enabled with Google’s mobile applications, or more likely it will release a free mobile operating system and software suit that will be advertising funded. Google has clearly demonstrated its interest in the cellular space with its release of Goog-411 and its involvement in the FCC’s auction of the 700 MHz spectrum.

Also adding fuel to the fire is the appearance that Google is gaining market share in the world’s hottest economy: China. A recent report by Analysis International indicates that Google increased its market share 4% in the last quarter to 22.8% versus the slower 1% increase by Baidu to 58.1%. Cynics have dismissed this by saying Google is not taking share from Baidu, but merely capturing more of the new market.

Whatever its plans, Google has shown the glass ceiling for its business may be higher than anyone has expected and it appears the stock is ready to run. Fundamentally the company is being valued at its historic lows, with a PE ratio in the 50s. Should the PE enter a period of expansion combined with sustained EPS growth, GOOG could easily hit the $800 target set by popular stock commentator Jim Cramer.

Wall Street analysts seem to recognize this potential as well. Of the analysts polled by Reuters, in the last month five have raised price targets compared to one lowering. TheStreet.com shows that of the 20 analysts the site covers, 16 rate GOOG a buy, 2 overweight, and 2 a hold. In other words none recommend selling the stock and the vast majority think you should be buying. All this optimism is the result of what is known as an “upgrade cycle.”

To top it off the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) has been dropping interest rates to avoid a recession due to the imploding home mortgage market in the U.S. This is at least a temporary boon to stocks as a whole since a lower interest rate frees up cash for investment.

Could this picture get any brighter and could the GOOG rose smell any sweeter? Sure, there is always potential with this company, but a few words of caution are in order. First off it should be understood that some of the processes driving GOOG’s performance may have reached their limits. The analyst upgrade cycle is fairly well played out. How much more positive can they get on this company? Myopically positive analyst coverage is one of Jim Cramer’s favorite warnings that a stock may be reaching its top.

Also the FOMC could decide that the economy is actually cooking along nicely and stop the interest rate cut cycle. The recent jobs report indicated that America is growing employment slightly faster than expected lending credit to this idea. The dramatic plunge in the value of the U.S. Dollar will pressure the FOMC to hike or at least maintain interest rates in the near future. The negative effect of a rate hike was demonstrated in May 2006 when it led to an 11% decline in the NASDAQ over the next three months. During this period GOOG decreased nearly 15%.

Another development to keep in mind is the accelerated insider selling by Google executives. According to Form4Oracle.com, over the past 13 weeks Google insiders have sold over $420 million in shares versus the $290 million of the previous 13 week period. Although trading on inside information is illegal, street sentiment is that heavy insider selling is a negative indicator.

Later this month Google share holders will face an important hurdle when third quarter earnings are announced. This year Google missed quarter earnings estimates for the second time in company history when their second quarter failed to meet analysts’ expectations. Over the next month the stock sank 10%, although in Google’s defense the NASDAQ sank over 7% in the same period. If on October, 18, Google should again miss earnings estimates it will add great strength the sentiment that their growth is unsustainable and a nasty period of PE contraction will most surely follow. The flip side of this coin is that if they blow away the estimates, like they traditionally do, a lot of apprehension will be relieved and you can expect to see new money from the sidelines push the stock even higher.

The last word of caution that I will offer is to keep in mind the big picture of how big this company is. A recent report by comScore indicates that Google conducted over 37 billion searches in August. The company accounts for over 50% of U.S. searches and over 60% world-wide. These numbers are expected to keep growing. Google is so dominate that investors, myself included, think Yahoo! should throw in the towel on search and focus on other services where they have fighting chance. I recently heard Leo Laporte say that if you are not listed by Google you don’t exist online. Combine Google’s asymptotic march to 100% search market share with its printed advertising and mobile phone ambitions, and you have a company that is ripe for an antitrust lawsuit. This is an endgame to the unbridled growth that many people seem to regard as inevitable for Google.

Having stated all these pros and cons for GOOG, the only thing I can say with complete confidence about this company is to summarize a quote from an investor whose name I cannot recall. The future will be volatile.

Monday

FeedWordPress is an Atom/RSS aggregator for WordPress. It syndicates content from newsfeeds that you choose into your WordPress blog; if you syndicate several newsfeeds then you can WordPress’s posts database and templating engine as the back-end of an aggregation (”planet”) website.

No Cron?If you do not have cron-facilities at your hosting provider, you have a bit of a problem. The latest version of WordPress have built in WP-cron facilities now, but it is extremely badly documented, and apart from the developers, no-one really seems to know how to use the functionality.With the lack of cron-support on our host, we would have to go to the manual update file a couple of times per day, and that would be annoying even by the end of the day.

http://www.yoursite.com/wp-content/update-feeds.php

Here is the fix

This little hack involves a bit of editing of the update-feeds.php file in your wp-content/-folder, and then subscribing to www.WebCron.org.Its free, and it gives you the option to run specific urls every hour, or however you want to time it.Webcron allows you to do tasks at set hours by looking for a page on your website.The system allows you to enter a username and password, which would prevent improper use of the system, but it does not word with the FWP update script. The webcron service uses GET to contact the url, and FWP accepts only POSTs.

Our first task is to make sure the script is not forwarded to the login page. Open up your editor, and load the update-feeds.php file.

Now, we do want to ensure that the script can still talk to the WP backend, so we do not want to remove the login check, but simply by-pass it by adding the variables above the check function, with the correct values, like this:

It could be seen as a breach of security to put your login and password in the .php file, but who is going to be looking at it? Only people who already have access to your FTP, thats who.We now have secured that the script is always logged in, and ready to communicate with the WordPress backend. But the script usually requires an layer of interactivity, where you as the user select which feeds (if not all) to update from a pulldown.

Here is where some additional editing comes into play. You simply add the variable to the beginning of the script, like this:

$_POST['update']='silent'; would work as well, but I left the verbose option there for debugging, and there is no reason to not leave it there.

There you have it. Its not a beautiful hack in its layout, but its effective. I wish the functionality of automated tasks were more better documented, so there would be no need for hacks like this, editing source .php-files and relying on 3rd party homepages.

Wednesday

76. After you created a text you can click on font type tab and tap "down" key over and over to scroll through the font list and see the changes in (relatively) real time. A feature that I am tired of waiting to happen in illustrator.

77. Still in text mode, a trick from Microsoft word to apply hi-light to your text hit Ctrl+Shift+ <> to resize your text, to your preferred font size. Pressing Ctrl key while you are typing also gives you a free transform box temporarily and will go if you release it. Resizing text also works by pressing Ctrl+T (on selected layer, not when you are typing). It still retains as an editable text layer after.

78. And remember, pressing enter when you type will take you to a new line just like typing a letter but pressing Ctrl+Enter or Enter on numeric key will finish what you type.

79. You can drag a layer on to any other opened images in Photoshop and it will copy it as a layer (better than copy and paste image). Holding down Shift while moving it will snap the image right on the center of the other opened image

80. If you are working with sets....

Click on the set, in the blending mode it shows pass through by default... if you have an adjustment layer within a set and you want that adjustment layer to effect those layers underneath it within the set only, set the blending mode of the set to "normal" instead.

Mentioned before with more explanation:

- Pressed F to switch to 3 different viewing mode... when I first try it I said "wtf? what it's for?" Well, if you are sick of painting your image on the corners just to find yourself resizing your current image window, with F you can pan way outside your image. Happy corner painting!!

- Create a new file, 500x500 px, create a new layer, get a standard brush and paint a dot on the top center of your image (like the number 12 position on a clock). Press Ctrl+Alt+T, it will duplicate your original layer and free transform the new one. Move the pivot point (the circle with little dot in it found when you are free transforming something) to the center of your image, rotate your image 30 degrees to the right and hit OK to confirm the transform

now.........

Be excited..........Hit Ctrl+Shift+Alt+T 10 times and see what happens!

81. When using the "move tool" you can select any layer by holding down the CTL key(CMD on a Mac) and clicking on the part of the layer on the canvas with your mouse. This way you won't have to go to the Layers palette every time and you don't have to keep checking on or off the auto select options for the move tool.

82. You can link up layers without going into the layers palette, by selecting the layer (how I just mentioned above) and holding down CTL + Shift(CMD + SHIT on a Mac) for each additional layer you want to link up. You can unlink them by clicking on the layer again.

83. You can delete more than one layer at a time.......by linking up all the layer you want to delete, and holding down CTL(CMD on a Mac) while you click on the garbage icon to delete the layer.

84. When using the type tool you can ok it by pressing CTL + Enter(CMD + Enter on a Mac) instead of clicking on the check mark on the options.

85. If you have more than one type layer, and want to make any of the following changes color/font/size/alignment/initializing to all of the type layers at the same time.....All you have to do is link up the type layer, hold down the Shift key and in the options for the type tool make your change i.e. color, size, etc.

86. You can use your number pad to change opacity for a layer.... I.e. type 5 and the opacity will be 50; type 55 and the opacity will be 55. You can use the number pad for any tool that uses opacity...like the airbrush tool, stamp tool, brush, gradient, etc.

87. Pressing Tab key will hide the Tools palette and any other palette that you have on the stage. Pressing "F" will change between Full Screen modes. Using these two tips you can view your work Full Screen without any palettes.(You can press CTL+Alt+0 to fit your work to the screen, or you can press CTL+0 to zoom to 100%)

88. Pressing the "+" and "-" keys while holding down CTL+Alt will resize the whole document window, not just the work area.

89. You can delete a layer by holding down the "Alt" key and pressing "L" twice......actually now with Photoshop 7 you got to press "L" three times. It's not actually a keyboard shortcut, but it's a quick way to do it....don't know if it works on a MAC.

94. When you select something, pressing Ctrl+J will copy the selected area and add another layer with the copied area - opposing copying the layer, making a new layer, and pasting it.

95. To glue the palettes together (all palettes combined into one strip), you just drag & drop a palette onto the end of another palette (watch the rectangle that indicates where the palette will get attached to).

96. Hold down Alt while Burning to Dodge instead, and vice versa.

97. Ctrl-click a layer to select an objects; alternatively, you may select more than one object/s in more than 1 layer by holding Shift while using the method just mentioned (Ctrl-click). To deselect, just press Ctrl+D.

98. If you have a mini scroll on your mouse, you may use that to zoom in (scroll up) or zoom out (scroll down).

99. Need to locate a layer quick? Use the Move Tool (V) and right click on the area the object lays. There should now be a “cursor-menu” with all the layers that is in that particular area. Now take a good guess and see which one of them fits the shoe; select a layer and Ctrl-Click the layer in the Layer Palette - see if the selection traces the object you desired to edit/find. Useful for those messy people (i.e. me!).

100. Need to get rid of a background quick? Assuming you at least know how to crop around an object, do so. Now press Ctrl+I or Shift+Ctrl+I for Inverse Selection. Press Ctrl+X to %@#!* that part out, and you should be left with the object!

101. Want to save the time from loading All your Photoshop brushes, when your Photoshop accidentally forgets to load them up (happens to me sometimes)? Select the brush tool, and click the little arrow pointing right (located at the top toolbar), next to the Master Diameter tick. Go down to Preset Manager and now there should be a menu of all the brushes currently loaded. Click on the first brush (top left) and scroll down to the bottom. Now hold Shift and click the last brush (bottom right). This should highlight all the brushes. See the “Save Set” to the right in the menu? Click that and name your brush set whatever you want, for this matter I just name it All (so I remember that this brush set contains all the brushes I currently have loaded, and is located near the top when loading the brushes up).

51. To center an image, Ctrl + A , Ctrl + X, Ctrl + V, I think it also puts that image on a new layer.

52. Ctrl+E will merge the highlighted layer down to the next

53. When you have a brush selected, using [ or ] will scroll up or down that brush list.

54. Double clicking the zoom tool will make the image 100%, double clicking the hand tool will fit the image to your screen resolution.55. Typing Content:

Ctrl + H will hide the highlight on your selected type.

If you click once while your type is selected on the font list, you can use your arrows to scroll up and down and see the fonts change on the fly!

Alt + Left or Right arrows will change your tracking in increments of 10Ctrl + Alt + Left or Right arrows will change your tracking in increments of 100Ctrl + Alt + Up or Down arrows will change your leading in increments of 10 ptsShift + Ctrl with <> will change your font size in increments of 2 pts

56. Ctrl + Alt + T to make a copy of the layer in which you want to transform.

57. Ctrl + Alt + Right arrow. duplicates the layer you are on.

58. Change the active layer : Alt + [ or ].

59. Move the active layer up and down : Ctrl + [ or ].

60. Link 2 layers: with move tool click in the first layer hold Shift and click in the second one.

61. Ctrl+[plus key] will let you zoom in on an image anytime while Ctrl+[minus key] zooms out. Ctrl+Alt+[plus key] will zoom in AND RESIZE the window to fit the image size... same for Ctrl+Alt+[minus key] as well.

62. When using the Polygonal Lasso Tool, click backspace to undo a lasso step.

64. Pressing D will reset the foreground and backgrounds colors to black and white.

65. If your image has multiple layers, create a Marquee selection and press Ctrl+Shift+Cit won't work if you selected a hidden layer) will copy the image into memory as if they were flattened! Paste it on a new document to see the result.

66. Ctrl+Alt+Z will do multiple undo, versus just one.

67. Ctrl+click a layer thumbnail to select the layer transparency

68. To see what your layer mask looks like (and edit it), Alt+click its thumbnail in the layers palette

69. Press and hold Ctrl+Alt and click the Help bar with your mouse, drag it down and highlight "About Photoshop" and let go of the left mouse button for a different About Photoshop splash/screen.

70. When using Polygon lasso tool hold Shift to make a perfect line, it goes every 30 degrees

71.Photoshop CS2: Group many layers by clicking the layers you want to group by clicking it while holding the Shift key down, and then press Ctrl+G to group them into a folder for means of better organization.

72. Ctrl+Shift+N creates a new layer with a dialog box; Ctrl+Shift+Alt+N gets you a new layer without the hassle.

74. Still in [ and ], Ctrl + [ or ] will move your currently selected layer up and down the hierarchy and Shift + [ or ] will select upper layer or lower layer.

75. Stamp Tool (s) is used to copy an area of image (defined by alt+clicking and area) and paint it somewhere else (cloning). It also works when you have multiple images open at the same time. Alt click an area of any opened file image and paint it anywhere else.

27. While using Brush or any other tools, change the opacity by typing the number.

*** type one number for % of it's ten times [4=40%]

***type two number for exact % [press 7 then 2 will get 72%]

28. Hold Alt while clicking on the eye icon beside the layer, it will hide all other layers.

29. Hold Alt while clicking the pen icon beside the layer, it will unchain this layer from all layers.

30. Select a layer, hold Alt and click the top edge of another layer, it will group them.

31. Hold Alt and click the button "Create a new layer", it will create a new adjustment layer.

32. Select a layer and hold Alt, then click on the garbage can button. It will instantly delete the layer, marquee where you want alpha and Ctrl+click the "Create new channel" button, it will create an alpha only on the area you marquee.

33. File> Automate > Contact Sheet: this can create a small thumbnail for every file, this can save you some time from searching.

34. When Move Tool is selected, toolbox on top can be useful from time to time, these are "Auto select layer" and "Show bounding box".

35. While Move Tool is selected, hold Shift (Alt+Shift+Right click) and allow whether or not to make a current layer chain with your upper layer.

36. With grid on, click the top left corner of the grid and drag to anywhere on the image to set the pivot, double clicking on the icon again reset the pivot.

37. After, draw a path on the image with pen tool, Ctrl+shift+H can hide/show it.

38. Control Navigator with keyboard sometimes can be more time efficient than mouse.

***

Home = move to top left cornerEnd = move to right bottom cornerPageUp = move up one pagePageDown = move down one pageCtrl+PageUp = move left one pageCtrl+PageDown = move right one pageShift+PageUp = move up 10 pixelShift+PageDown = move down 10 pixelCtrl+Shift+PageUp = move left 10 pixelCtrl+Shift+PageDown = move right 10 pixel

39. Ctrl+Tab allows you to switch between different image files you are working on.

42. hold Ctrl then you can draw a red box in the Navigator thumbnail for viewing.

43. Hold Alt and click on any of the history steps, that step will be copied and become the most recent one.

44. Alt drag a step from a serial action can copy it to another action.

45. Alt-click the flare preview thumb, and you can fill in numerical co-ordinates for lens flare.

46. Holding Shift + Alt while transforming an object will do it proportionally, from the center.

47. If you have the move tool selected and you want something duplicated just hold the alt key and move the image, holding the Shift + Alt while doing this, it will move it along one axis.

48. If you want to straighten an image that is crooked (maybe from scanning), click on the eyedropper tool or hit the I key 3 times to get the ruler. Click on the left side of the straight edge, then the right side of the straight (but crooked) edge. The choose Image> Rotate Canvas> Arbitrary, Photoshop will give you the degrees of rotation you just click ok.

49. If you create something in Illustrator, copy and paste it in Photoshop, it will ask you if you want this to be a pixel, path, or shape layer.

50. If you have a mask on a layer and you want to place a image in there and keep the mask. Simply open the image, say copy, and then Ctrl click on the layer to select the mask and use Shift + Ctrl + V to paste it into the mask which will also put it on a new layer as well.

2. Hold Shift + click the top blue bar for toolbar and palette will move them to the nearest edge.

3. Double click the top blue bar, on any palette window, to minimize it.

4. Double click the gray background will bring up open file option, Hold Shift+double click will open up the browser.

5. Sick of the default gray background around your image? Select paint bucket, hold shift and click on the gray background, it will change to whatever color you have in your foreground color box.

6. In Photoshop, all "Cancel" buttons in a window can be changed to a "Reset" button by holding Alt.

7. Caps lock will switch your cursor for accuracy.

8. Press F button, it will switch between 3 different screen modes and give you more working area.

9. To draw a straight line, click then move to the end point and hold shift + click.

10. Hold Ctrl will temporary make any tool into move tool until you release Ctrl.

11. Ctrl + Alt and click drag the image, it will make a duplication of the current image over lay on top.

12. Hold Space bar, it will make any tool into "Hand Tool" until you release Space bar.

13. While in Zoom Tool, Ctrl+space = zoom in, alt+space = zoom out.

14. Hold Ctrl and press "+" or "-" it will change the % for image in navigator window.

15. When Using eyedropper tool to capture foreground color, hold Alt and click, it will instantly capture the color for background.

16. With Measure Tool, draw a line then hold Alt and draw another line from the end of the first line, it will measure the angle.

17. Ctrl+Alt+Z and Ctrl+Shift+Z will go back and forth in the history.

18. Alt+Backspace and Ctrl+Backspace will fill in the whole screen with foreground color or background color, Shift+backspace will bring up option window, Alt+Shift+Backspace and Ctrl+Shift+Backspace, will fill the image with foreground or background color but will leave the alpha transparent area alone.

19. When free transforming with Ctrl+T, hold Alt to keep the original image and then to transform a duplicated layer of it. Ctrl+Shift+T to repeat whatever you did in the last transform.

20. To make sure your Crop is on the edge of the image, hold Ctrl while cropping.

21. Ctrl+J will duplicate the current layer.

22. Ctrl+Shift+E will merge all visible layers to one layer, Ctrl+Shift+Alt+E will make a copy of the original and merge all visible layers.

23. While using Marquee Tools, hold Alt it will make the starting point as a center of the selection.

24. Ctrl + D to deselect, Ctrl+Shift+D to reselect what you deselected.

25. While selecting with Marquee tool, pressing the space bar can allow you to move the selection.

Monday

Here are some essential web design tips that every web site should follow. Design your web site by following these tips and I guarantee that visitors will have a great first impression of your site.

Fast Loading web site designs - This is the number 1 tip that every web designer should follow. You might design a web site that looks fantastic but few people are going to see it if it takes a long time to load. Your designs should be optimized for the web and should not take more than 15 seconds to load. Remember, you might have a great design but very few people are going to see it if it takes a long time to load. Click here to for 10 tips to fast-loading web pages.

Clear Navigation - Once a visitor has come to your site you need to make them go through your site. To do this you need to have clear navigation. Make sure all your important links are at prominent places. Preferably right on top - that's usually where a visitor first looks. Make use of menus on the right and the left. Try to link to as many pages of your site. Let your information be accessible from all parts of the site. You never know what a visitor may be interested in. Try to also use the footer for your important links.

All Resolutions - Today, there are computers with all kinds of resolution. They range from 640 x 480 to 1024 x 768 and go even higher. Your job is to design your site for all these resolutions. The best way to do this is to design your site in terms of percentage and not pixels.

Browser Compatibility - Make sure your site is browser compatible. Your web site should look good in Netscape as well as in Internet Explorer. Don't stop designing your site as soon as you find that it looks great on IE. Usually Netscape gives some problems, especially when you try doing complicated HTML designs. But don't give up too soon, usually with patience these problems can be easily fixed.

Readable and professional looking fonts - Don't ask me how many times I've clicked out of a site just because the font is in Comic Sans and the color is a bright pink or green. Just by looking at the font you feel that the site is not a professional site. Don't use Comic Sans and other fancy fonts that may not be available on most computers. If the font you use is not available in a visitors computer the web site will use the default font of your computer which is much worse. So try to keep to common and professional web fonts. The fonts that I always stick to are Arial and Verdana.

Minimize the use of images - I believe that sometimes simple designs are the most effective for the web. Keep your site simple but neat. Don't clutter your page with big, bulky images that take ages to load. Instead use tables creatively and design eye - catching icons that will draw a visitor's attention to a particular section of your site. Tip - Visitors are usually more interested in content than in design.

Use of white space - Try not to clutter up your page with too many images, backgrounds and colorful fonts. Again use the Keep It Simple principle by minimizing the use of graphics and using a lot of white space. White space gives a sense of spaciousness and overall neatness to a site. Notice the white space in our site.

Check for broken links - Always check for broken links within a site before uploading it to your web server. In Dreamweaver you can check for broken links by right clicking on any file in the Site Files Window and then clicking on Check links - Entire Site. If you don't have this facility you need to upload your site and then check it using online tools like Net Mechanic.

Experience the power of the new Firefox 3. Its now in alpha stage and is now available for download(For testers and developers).

Firefox 3 comes bundled with a lot more features and ease of use.There have been much improvements in performance, stability, and security, and it’s also going to present several new user facing features.

There have been much modifications in Bookmarks,Content Handling,Micro Format and malware detection,private browsing and several other feature..

If you wish to test the alpha release of Firefox then get it here.(Remember this is just an alpha release not the final one)

In the age of the virtual consumer there is no venue of advertising more widely utilized than the internet; unfortunately, this means that everyone is doing it. It makes it very difficult for the small businessman or woman to gain the proverbial "leg up" on the marketplace. For this reason many are looking for an alternative to traditional means of marketing.

The marketing offered by Google in the form of pay per click advertising has provided an option. If you have ever explored the options for advertising on the internet will know about Google Adwords. Google's Adwords permits a marketer to create their ads based on specifically chosen keywords. These ads will in turn be shown alongside the results from searches made on these keywords.

If you happen to not be familiar with Google's Adwords you only need to go to www.google.com and put a search term in the search box. You will be taken to a page that has a section on the top and on the right side that is labeled 'sponsored links'. Ads in the 'sponsored links' sections are made using Google's Adwords.

Launching and managing a Google AdWords campaign can be a daunting proposition.

There is no doubt that the extra exposure provided by such an endeavor can bring exponentially increased profits; however, the fact that AdWords operates on a pay per click basis (the advertiser is charged a fee for every time a browser follows the link to their website) means that it can quickly deplete an advertising budget.

This is why it is vital that pay-per-click advertising campaigns be managed with great care.

The first item in question is the careful selection of keywords. It is essential that the keywords pertain to the subject in question and be specific enough to ensure that the browsers who are viewing them are likely to make a purchase but general enough that anyone browsing without a specific idea of what they are looking for will be directed to the advertisement.

As the marketer contemplates what to bid on a keyword they must consider what amount will fit into their budget for their campaign. Ads online will undoubtedly bring leads that will not produce a sale and just end up being an expense. It is vital that the marketer take care when assessing the possible profits of campaigns before committing himself to the venture.

An advertisement that the advertiser is paying thirty to forty cents a click on will inevitably appear higher on the list of sponsored links than one for which the advertiser is only paying ten to fifteen cents a click. This makes it more visible to the average internet browser who is generally unwilling to look beyond the first few pages. This exposure means nothing if it is constantly bringing unproductive leads and wasting thirty to forty cents a click.

After you select keywords and set your campaign in motion you must carefully check the progress of the ads and keywords. Ads that are unproductive just lead to wasted advertising monies.

An advertisement placed on a search engine such as Google will have a link tracing it to the website, allowing the webmaster to determine precisely how much of their website traffic and sales were generated from that specific ad. An ad that generates a very small percentage, will need to be reformatted and possibly withdrawn entirely.

Careful management of a pay per click campaign is an essential component to its success. There are numerous companies that, should the advertiser feel that they are not up to the task themselves, will happily step in to fulfill the management duties (for a fee, of course) and lead a campaign to success.

The internet is crowded with marketers who tout the merits of Google's AdWords, spilling forth the message to the young and lazy businessmen, that for a small fee they will share the secrets to making hundreds of dollars each day, doing as little a 3 to 4 hours of work from their den, in their pajamas.

Wait a minute. Lazy?

That's right. The simple truth of the matter is that AdWords is not that difficult to navigate. With a little bit of effort on their parts everyone who has willingly handed over their money to these so-called "experts" could learn everything they need to know without spending a single penny.

In order for an AdWords campaign to succeed it is necessary for the strategy to contain three key components:

1. A successful keyword. The keyword decision is the most important decision for an Adwords campaign. Without efficient keywords to get business going the rest of what the marketer does won't make any difference.

The secret to choosing a keyword is to choose one that is general enough to allow the consumer who has never seen nor heard of the product in question to be directed to it while at the same time being specific enough that it is not going to generate an excessive number of false leads.

It is a fact that the search engines will be requiring a fee from you for every time someone clicks on your ad even if sales are not made as a result. The main thing for them is whether they are making a profit.

The significance of this is that when an ad has a common keyword (advertisers can go to the search engine's data base and find keywords that are often used in ads) it may bring in tons of visitors but not many sales.

AdWords has a number of tools available for marketers who are having difficulty finding an appropriate keyword for their ad. By visiting www.adwords.google.com advertisers will have complete access to some of the greatest pay per click resources on the internet.

2. High bid rankings. The basic fact is that internet searchers come from a broad range of demographics. They usually know what they want and want it right away.

This means that they are not going to have the patience to search through hundreds of pages of information; if what they are looking for is not within the first five to ten pages of a search they are probably going to attempt to send their search in a new direction with a new set of keywords.

If you are a marketer this means that you need your ads on the first page or so of search results. This is tricky because the as are put up by how much a marketer is willing to pay per click and not by when they were turned in.

Finding that vital balance between the desired exposure and the amount of money shelled out is a necessary but difficult task. While being on the top of the display list is desirable and garners attention it isn't helpful if your budgetary concerns don't allow enough exposure.

Lucky for us that Google has a feature that lets a ceiling be put on the amount of money spent on ad campaigns. If the ceiling is reached, the ad is labeled inactive and not shown in the search results etc.

3. Follow up. With all due care and diligence given to the setup of the ad campaign, there are no guarantees that it will bring in the desired results. The marketer should remain vigilant so the can see how the ads are performing and avoid any problems and make changes to their campaign as warranted.

There it is! All the key features of a profitable Adwords campaign have been laid out for you without a high price tag. The ball is in your court .are you going to take it and score?

At the end of the day, internet marketing is a business about driving more targeted traffic to your web site and eventually turning into qualified and convertible buyers.

From Perry Marshall, a PPC expert says: “It’s about getting in front of people who are looking for you to sell right at the moment and get them to response.” With PPC, you have the ability to reach your target market almost instantly.

Several attractions of using PPC:

quickest and fastest way to generate targeted traffic.

market a wide range of products and services to global audience

precisely control your targeted audience and date of advertisement

simply set up a good campaign in less than 10 minutes and let it run autopilot

pay only when visitors click in your ads.

no upfront cost

pay only a "certain amount" per click which is decided by you.

ads display on the first page of search engine with bidding of keywords determined solely by you and your choice of keywords.

Pitfalls of PPC: Cost you a dime (hundreds or thousands of dollars) if set up wrongly, mainly the selection of keywords.

To create a profitable PPC campaign which drives targeted traffic to your web site instantly, it is imperative to follow the simple tactics listed below:

(1) Perform a thorough keyword research for your product.

You want to find some niche keywords that can drive targeted traffic to your website. A good keyword to use is usually a question-type keyword, name of products, url of the product's website. A keyword can be classified into broad-type keyword, phrase-type and exact-type keyword.

For instance, you are using 'internet marketing' as a keyword.

A broad-type keyword is simply typing internet marketing in your campaign. Hence, as long as any users type in internet or marketing, your ads will display.

A phrase-type keyword has quotes enclosed the keyword and it is written as "internet marketing". When a user keys in a phrase like internet marketing business or online internet marketing, your ads will be shown.

Lastly, an exact-type keyword is written as [internet marketing]. Your ads will only be shown when an user keys in the exact keywords internet marketing in the search engine.

(2) Create a campaign with well written title and description.

Your title should create curiosity so that people will click on your ads. It should contain keyword so that your ads will be noticed easily and subseqently, high chance of ranking in top 10 positions. The description should entail benefits and features of your products. Preferably, it should include your keyword. The keyword added in your ads will appear in bold on the search engine.

(3) Always Test, Test and Test your campaign

Create 2 variations for your campaign to test the headline, description and url.

For example, I create a campaign with 2 variations using internet marketing as keyword.In the below variation, I am testing the title/headline of the ads. Use the title of ads which is more popular with the audience. A popular ads will be shown more often.